Late Night
by Winnywriter
Summary: Dean and Cas are new parents, and are starting to forget what a full night's sleep feels like...but somehow, that's okay. Pure domestic destiel fluff. Oneshot.


**Pure, unadulterated, unapologetic domestic fluff. Because sometimes I just get into that kind of mood. Enjoy. :)**

**I own nothing.**

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At four in the morning, Dean woke up and Cas was gone.

It struck him as odd only when he glanced over at the clock and, somewhere in his sleep-hazey mind, realized that it had been nearly an hour since Cas had hauled himself out of bed to answer Joshua's insistant cries. Now, maybe it was nothing to worry about. Maybe everything was perfectly fine, but Dean, being Dean, could not let go of the nagging sense that something was wrong. Blame a few too many years on the job and a lifetime of honing his hunter instincts for that.

So he sighed, rubbed the sleep out of his dry eyes and threw off the covers, bracing himself against the icy cold bite of the bare wood on the soles of his feet as he trudged down the hall.

Joshua's bedroom light was on, a warm glow spilling out through the cracked open door. Cas stood with his back to him, next to the crib, shoulders hunched as he held their squirming infant son in his arms. He whispered words that Dean couldn't hear, trying to calm the child: maybe they were English or French or Latin...hell, maybe they were even Enochian. It didn't matter really. No matter the language, all it took was Castiel's voice on any given normal night to soothe their son.

Cas' voice could at one time blow out windows and make grown men quiver with righteous fear; it could send demons packing back to Hell and command legions of angels. But now, it was the voice of a man, and the voice of a father. And it could, more often than not, put the child right to sleep.

Dean would never understand it, but he wasn't about to complain.

"He still up?" he whispered, and Castiel stopped, looking up. His eyes were undeniably exhausted and wide with worry.

"I believe he may be sick," Cas said, voice tinged with an edge of parental concern. "He wouldn't stop crying before, but...now, his cries are quieter, like he's tired himself out. But he still won't sleep..." He let out a cut off breath as he looked down at the baby's scrunched up face again. "He won't eat either, and I changed him already...I even tried singing to him."

Dean couldn't help but laugh. "_You_sang to him?"

"Several lullabies, yes," Cas said with a nod as he stifled a yawn. "In many languages. Not even _Hey June_seems to help."

"Well first of all, it's _Hey Jude_," said Dean. He stepped up next to Cas, looking down at Joshua with one eyebrow tiredly cocked. The baby was twisting and mumbling softly against his father's T-shirt, looking agitated, but exhausted. Cas' concern began to catch in Dean as well, and he pressed the back of his hand gently against the child's forehead. "Doesn't feel warm..."

"I don't understand what's bothering him," Cas said.

"Just calm down, okay?" Dean soothed, letting his hand come to rest in the curve of Castiel's back. "Relax...You're just gonna work him up more if you get upset."

"I'm not upset." Dean raised his eyebrows as if to reiterate what he'd just said, and Cas pursed his lips. He made an effort to take a deep breath to calm himself. "I just...I worry I'm doing something wrong."

"You and me both," said Dean with a chuckle. "Hell, I always expected I'd be up at four in the morning exorcising a demon or driving cross-country at this point in my life, if I was even still alive at all..." He scratched the back of his own neck, a nervous tick. "Never thought I'd be trying to put a baby to sleep."

"Whenever you try, you always rile him up," Cas pointed out, finally breaking into a tentative smile. "He can never go to sleep after you touch him."

"What can I say? I guess I just have an infectiously bubbly personality." Cas paused as Joshua wriggled in his grip again, balling his little hands up into fists and pressing them against his father's chest. Castiel's brow creased in worry for a moment before something seemed to cross his mind, and he handed their son to Dean.

"Actually," he said, already headed for the door. "I think I may have an idea. Hold him a moment."

"Hey, where-" Cas was out of the room before Dean could ask any more, and he sighed, shifting Joshua slightly into the crook of his elbow and holding him close. "Never know what he's thinking half the time," he mused. "You probably understand him better than anyone else. He sure understands you better than I do..." Joshua cooed, staring up at his dad curiously. Dean couldn't help but smile, his heart warming in his chest. What was it about this kid that could make him go so soft so quickly? It wasn't just him, either; Cas practically melted for the baby. The ex-angel was putty in Joshua's tiny little hands.

The only other time he'd seen love so strong in Castiel's eyes was when Cas looked at him, when their gazes locked in just the right way. Sometimes, the intensity of it was downright frightening.

"You know," Dean mused, almost forgetting that he was speaking to anyone other than himself. "Sometimes I think it scares him how much he loves you..." He let out a chuckle. "Definitely scares me how much I..." He trailed off. Even now, it was hard to finish that sentence aloud.

Joshua twisted in his grasp, gurgling irately, his infant brow furrowed in a way that reminded him startlingly much of Cas. It amazed Dean how alike Castiel and the baby were, despite sharing no blood between them. Although, Dean mused, he figured he would much rather his son turn out more like Cas than himself.

Joshua began to whimper, and Dean was suddenly very much aware of his own surroundings and even more aware of the terrifying prospect that his son might start to cry again. Maybe he'd found a second wind. "Hey, hey..." he soothed, bouncing the baby up and down in his arms gently. "What's got you so worked up, huh? You upset cause Cas isn't here? You know, if you like him better than me, all you have to do is say so."

Apparently, Joshua took it as a hint, because he chose that very moment to put his little lungs to work again, crying with some real gusto as Dean tried unsuccessfully to calm him.

Dean could take apart the Impala and rebuild her from the ground up. He could repair and clean a shotgun in no time, and he never got lost on the road. But a baby was different; why didn't kids come with manuels? And for that matter, why didn't they come with off switches?

The floorboards creaked in a familiar rhythm as Cas approached, his stride becoming notably quicker and more urgent when Joshua's cries inreased in volume. He appeared moments later, something in his hand that Dean couldn't quite make out, and walked straight over to him, hovering over the squirming child. As Cas laid a hand on Joshua's little arm, bidding him to calm down with a quiet, gentle "Shh...", the baby seemed to find comfort in Castiel's bright - albeit tired - gaze.

"See?" Castiel said, quriking an eyebrow at Dean. "You rile him up."

"It's not my fault! Where did you go, anyway?" Cas somewhat sheepishly looked down at the package in his hands.

"I was going to save it for his birthday," he explained. "And it's not quite done yet, but I...maybe he needs it now." Slowly, he lowered it into Joshua's grip, and the baby's eyes became huge and bright with innocent, gleaming curiosity as he wrapped his fingers around it. Dean smiled in amused surprise. Trapped in Joshua's vice-like arms was a small stuffed angel.

It was a bit asymetrical; one arm slightly larger than the other, but every stitch in its body was lovingly precise. Its torso was swathed in a white felt robe, and its somewhat lopsided eyes were a soft aqua color: a mixture, it seemed, of Castiel's bright blue and Dean's emerald green. Stitched tightly to its back were two black wings, flat against its body so that even the most stubborn of little fingers couldn't rip them off. The yellow ring around its stringy silver hair immediately disappeared halfway into Joshua's probing mouth.

"Cas..." Dean mused after a moment of appreciating the silence. "Did you...make that?" Cas looked down at the floor, and Dean was sure it was a trick of the light making it look like he was blushing.

"Well...yes. I tried, anyway. That was actually a third attempt. Like I said, it's not done."

"Yeah, well I think it'll have to be. I doubt you're getting it back." Dean chuckled fondly. Something stood out to him, though, as Joshua turned the angel over in his arms, hugging it close. He squinted. "What's that? On its robe?" He could just barely make out the sewn-on lettering: _June._

"It needs a name, doesn't it?" Castiel asked.

"Yeah, but why would you name it-" He stopped, suddenly understanding. Something warm clenched in his chest and burned in his eyes.

"I can...fix it later," he said. "I probably should have looked it up before sewing it on..."

"Nah..." said Dean, smiling and pretending his throat wasn't so tight. "It's fine. Perfect. Besides, I think he likes it."

Slowly but surely, with his arms still clutching June the angel, Joshua's eyes began to flutter closed. And just before Dean thought he might fall asleep standing up next to the crib, the baby finally drifted off to sleep. "For once you actually got him to sleep," Cas remarked. Dean smirked at him, slowly lowering Joshua back into the crib and pulling the blanket up over him.

"Shut up," he said, wrapping his arms around Castiel's shoulders and pressing his nose against his jaw. "Besides, it wasn't me. I think it was all thanks to his angel."


End file.
